Letter 08-27-2013

Everyone,

 

Midvale is never short of surprises. The stories from some of the other missionaries and their investigators... and the frequency of the insanity is crazy. So many people working to baptism go to jail... or move... or go back to meth... or whatever.

 

But none of our kids have gotten into any of that so we're still good :) The weather is cooling off, so there's really nothing to complain about. Finding is always a bit of a struggle with an area that covers .4 square miles - the Lord provides enough to keep us busy though. If there's one thing that's true about this mission it's that, even though we might not be busy with investigators all the time, all the investigators we do pick up get to the water. And it's a miracle every single time they do.

 

So the funny story of the week is when a 13 year old boy OYM'd us walking home from school (usually when people talk with us instead of us talking with them, it's not a good thing) and asked if we were Jehovah's Witness. We told him we were LDS. From there the convo went something like this:

"You know that God isn't real, right?"

EC - "Where'd you get that idea?"

"It's just common knowledge... there couldn't be a God."

EC - silence...

"There's no proof there's a God."

EC - "Where did life start from then?"

"You've never heard of the Big Bang Theory, have you?"

Elder Oliveros - "You mean the TV show?"

 

hahaha i thought it was funny anyways. If you were wondering how that finished up, he told us to have a bad day and walked off. We get quite a bit of "Hail Satans" and such... we even got a "White Power" yesterday?? But hey it's all part of the gig.

 

--Elder Chandler

------------------------------

thought: Children of God

 

I really don't think there's a more powerful thought than the fact that we are children of God with a divine heritage. We inherited divine potential. Borrowing a bit from Elder Bednar's talk on chastity and taking a little of my own inflection: We are defined by our divine potential. What a thought! We are defined by our divine potential. Right now in the Book of Life each one of us is defined by our potential, and it's up to us to live up to that definition.

 

I wrote a little couplet-thing that I feel connected to:

I think in this life

We oft forget this thought.

The thought: in this life

We are as, "I think oft..."

 

I hope I can more often reflect on my divine heritage and potential in order to live up to and ultimately become as such.

Letter 08-20-2013

Hello,

Whether it be the heat in the past weeks or whatever, it's been really hard to find people. But the Lord always provides a way to baptize twice monthly through faith, obedience, and diligence.

The very first day I got into this area, we met a young mom that wanted her two children baptized. Because she had the kids before she was 18, her parents have legal custody of them and haven't wanted them baptized. But this last week she finally got permission from her parents! So they're being baptized on August 31st. They've been attending church in West Valley with their grandparents for a long time now, so we're able to move quickly with them. It's awesome.

Other than that we just keep going out and working. And playing frisbee and basketball on pdays.

--Elder Chandler

----------------------------------

thought: commitment

I recently went back to read Elder Cook's talk from this last October. I think the talk was kind of overshadowed by President Monson's preceding announcement for me... because it's very, very insightful. It attempts to tackle the apathy felt by many members towards the church, and even just to help us during those "spiritual droughts" we all sometimes fall into. In some ways I feel like Elder Cook's talk and Elder Holland's talk from that general conference attempt to address the same issue. Elder Holland's talk is beautiful to listen to and inspiring, while Elder Cook's is quainter and more logic-based. I like both.

It's not until the middle of his talk that he really gets into his meat - starting with a quote by CS Lewis. He asks us first to change our paradigm towards commitment to the gospel, to realize we're sick and need a doctor. He gives us a good process to be able to do so in Alma chapter 5. He gives us some checks to make sure we aren't doing - abuse or sexual immorality/impure thoughts.

In PMG we are told that all concerns are based in either testimony or commitment. By helping our investigators first realize(!) they need to repent ("Commitment and repentance are closely intertwined"), then go through the process of commitment we can help them more often overcome the commitment concern, which is by far the most common concern I've run into. (The investigators I've taught usually have testimonies...)

It's also helped me a lot to be able to work my way through back to that fervor pitch to want to share the gospel by following Elder Cook's suggestions instead of relying on spiritual punches from Elder Holland :)

Elder Sighting 08-18-2013

Valerie,

I was pleasantly surprised when I turned around in Sunday School today, and there was 'Elder Chandler.' I grew up in the Midvale 6th Ward and was back visiting. I had a training in SLC on Friday, and went to my old ward for church this morning. When I asked him, "Are your parents Greg and Valerie?" he didn't seem totally shocked but did ask how I knew you. When I told him I was in the Little Flock Ward it all made sense. Attached is a picture of us with his companion. It isn't super clear, but I thought you would still like to see it.

Lynnette Smith

Letter 08-13-2013

Hey,

I think I'm the most tan I've even been in my life. Not just tan but missionary tan - a beautiful white strip on my wrist from the watch and a nice white neck from a high collar. It's funny because Elder Oliveros always looks in the mirror and says "I'm so dark". Apparently just like it's cool to be tan in the USA, it's cool to be light in the Phillipines. I will say though I think my leg hairs are suffocating because they haven't been outside in shorts for 14 months now... Poor guys :(

The work is still where it was last week... all of our time spent finding. We're doing a bit of everything - LARCs, member work, personal finding, formers. It's going to come together at some point on the Lord's timeline, but right now we're still kind of struggling in the dark.

I've been reading through all of the conference ensigns in our apartment during "free time" (lunch, dinner-at-home, etc). It might also interest you mom that we spend a lunch every once in a while in the church building where I've been practicing hymns. I can play "Nearer My God to Thee" and "Come Follow Me" now, and I'm working on a couple more. Piano lessons and music theory aren't totally useless out here...

I don't know how many of you watch "The District" or know what it is, but rumor has been going around that they're making a District 3 in the Salt Lake West Mission... we just got a short clip the other day during Zone Training and it turns out Elder Joseph Isabell is in it. Kinda fun to have a college roommate become a movie star!

Also we just did the math and our area is 4/10ths of a square mile, ha.

Have a good week,

Elder Chandler

--------------------------------

thought: Beguile, yet guileless

Part of training in my last 3 transfers has been going through the 12-week training program. It basically adds an extra hour to companion study in the morning and gives us time to go through a guided program through Preach My Gospel. It's really insightful. Each week we've been coming up with a catch phrase for what we've learned that week. This weeks was the title of the thought.

There's a phrase that's always intrigued me, found in two places in the standard works that I know of. "Be wise, yet harmless" - Alma 18:22-23 and Matthew 10:16. The statement to "be wise, yet harmless" is directed straight at missionaries - Christ gives the injunction to his Apostles right before they are sent on missions, and Mormon uses it to describe Ammon during a classic missionary discussion.

(I apologize in advance for the scripture math): Alma 18:23, Alma "beguiles" King Lamoni. That's his being "wise". Therefore, "beguile, yet harmless". Matthew 10:16 footnote for harmless defines harmless as "guileless", and thus we get to: "Beguile, yet guileless". Guile = G. G = notG, which is kinda dumb because that's a completely illogical statement.

I just like the idea though that as missionaries we're supposed to be sneaky and crafty but, as long as we're doing so in love and for the right reasons, we're doing our job well, specifically dealing with committing people to do things.. It reminds me of the wording of Phillipians 4:12, counseling us to be "full and hungry, to abound and to be abased". Because of the contrasting opposites though, the idea that they are trying to get across is expressed even though it's way hard to describe in words.

Sorry this was kind of a wordy thought without a good conclusion.

Letter 08-06-2013

Hi,
Apparently this has been the hottest July in the history of the state of Utah. Wasn't it just yesterday we had the coldest January on record? Hmmmm...

August doesn't feel any cooler yet. We're still working on finding people to teach. It's seriously the most trying thing in missionary work. We taught a lot of LARCs (Less Active/Recent Convert lessons). From what we've heard, and for some reason no one is sure about exactly, apparently teaching a lot of LARCs helps you to find investigators, so we're testing it out and making sure we ask for referrals.

I personally want to make sure we don't fall into the same trap that Elder Bloomfield and I fell into in Murray Little Cottonwood when we were given the Coronas family and some others the Sisters were teaching that we weren't helping progress very well. We've got to find the balance between working with families like the Darlingtons, Ammons, and Andrews while still making sure we're finding time to, well, find.

We just finished having a massive birthday party at Brother Hobson's house for Elder Ciavardini and Elder Nuttall. It's fun seeing a fair amount of people again. Bro Hobson is so good to us Elders. He takes us shopping every week and we have lunch at his house every Saturday. He even took in Chris Floyd a couple weeks ago while we finished teaching him and baptized him. He's a returning member.

--Elder Chandler
 -------------------------------

thought: fun one-liner from the August Ensign

We get our hands on the new Ensigns whenever we have a mission conference. This time we were lucky and got it pretty early in the month. I love some of the profound statements in it. I like to try and come up with my own every once in a while. It's fun. Anyways....:

"We pray continuously for guidance, but we shouldn’t expect continuous revelation. We expect continuing revelation..."

I love how pithy the apostles are in their language.

For all I do though, it's hard to beat Elder Holland: "To those who were once with us but have retreated, preferring to pick and choose a few cultural hors d’oeuvres from the smorgasbord of the Restoration and leave the rest of the feast..."

I hope I can say things that succinctly and cool someday. Honestly, I think I could read that out loud forever and never get bored of hearing it. :)

Elder Sighting 08-06-2013

Ryan and most of his district on Temple Square.